"'The grace I most want,' added she, 'is humility. A partial friend, in order to support my spirits, would flatter my conduct: gratified with her soothing, I should, perhaps, not so entirely cast myself for comfort on God. Contented with human praise, I might rest in it. Besides, having endured the smart, I would not willingly endure it in vain. We know who has said, 'If you suffer with me, you shall also reign with me.' It is not, however, to mere suffering that the promise is addressed, but to suffering for his sake, and in his spirit.' Then turning to the Bible which lay before her, and pointing to the sublime passage of St Paul, which she had just been reading, 'Our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' 'Pray,' said she, 'read this in connection with the next verse, which is not always done. _When_ is it that it works for us this weight of glory? _Only_ 'while we are looking at the things which are not seen.' Do admire the beauty of this position, and how the good is weighed against the evil, like two scales differently filled; the affliction is light, and but for a moment; the glory is a _weight_, and it is _forever_. 'Tis a feather against lead, a grain of sand against the universe, a moment against eternity. Oh, how the scale which contains this world's light trouble kicks the beam, when weighed against the glory which shall be revealed.' "At the end of two years she had a little girl; this opened to her a new scene of duties, and a fresh source of consolation. Her religion proved itself to be of the right stamp, by making her temper still more sweet, and diffusing the happiest effects through her whole character and conversation. When her husband had staid out late, or even all night, she never reproached him. When he was at home, she received his friends with as much civility as if she had liked them. He found that his house was conducted with the utmost prudence, and that while she maintained his credit at his table, her personal expenses were almost nothing: indeed, self seemed nearly annihilated in her. He sometimes felt disappointed, because he had no cause of complaint, and was angry that he had nothing to condemn. "As he has a very fine understanding, he was the more provoked, because he could not help seeing that her blameless conduct put him continually in the wrong. All this puzzled him. He never suspected there was a principle, out of which such consequences could grow, and was ready to attribute to insensibility, that patience which nothing short of Christian piety could have inspired. He had conceived of religion as a visionary system of words and phrases, and concluded that from so unsubstantial a theory, it would be a folly to look for practical effects.